Re: Removing page and swap files

If the consistency of the system disk device contents are a consideration and an issue for your organization, then you'll want to boot and create the copy standalone; by booting another disk and using BACKUP from a quiescent device.

The online stuff is good for creating the impression of a recovery path. I've patched together online BACKUPs and gotten the results to boot, but the online approach and the recovery process can sometimes be problematic; there can be data loss with the approach.

The backing storage assignment for a process page is visible via SDA> SHOW PROCESS /PAGE and the "Bak" column, if you're into brute-force.

Re: Removing page and swap files

>Maybe we have just got a little too complacent with having got away with it on all the VMS boxes here at some point in the past.

When recovering from online backups and my "favorite" /IGNORE=INTERLOCK switch (my previous rants, err, comments on this switch are easy to locate), the most common case tends to be a gronked queue database; entries tend to get lost or stuck.

Whether and what other stuff tends to gets slammed depends on what you're doing on the particular disk; look for stuff with open files and moderate application-level caching or with frequent and multi-part I/O writes and for transactional stuff, as a start.

If the applications happen to be quiescent or can be convinced to be quiescent, you're good to go.